Marcelo Mayer is widely considered the Boston Red Sox's future shortstop, and plenty of fans want to see Mayer take over the position right now. Trevor Story's athleticism isn't what it used to be, and his injury-plagued body would be better preserved at second base. A simple position swap between Story and Mayer makes a lot of sense.
Story has always been a smooth defender, but Mayer looks even smoother, and he's also more than 10 years younger. Story had an impressive season defensively for almost all of 2025, but he started to wear down at the end of the campaign, leading to an uptick in errors. That troubling trend has carried over into the start of 2026 — Story already has three errors over the first 14 games.
Why hasn't Red Sox manager Alex Cora already swapped Story and Mayer? Why didn't Cora start 2026 this way? Some feel that Cora is caving to the principles of seniority and catering to the veteran Story. If so, that'd be quite the hypocritical move for a club that recklessly tossed a 22-year-old Kristian Campbell onto last year's Opening Day roster and has now handed over the keys of the organization to a 21-year-old Roman Anthony.
Alex Cora should swap Marcelo Mayer and Trevor Story's positions
If Mayer is the heir apparent to Story at shortstop once his deal expires after the 2027 season (team option 2028), why not just get ahead of things and play Mayer at shortstop right now, especially if he's more effective there than Story? It'll be fascinating to see if Cora pulls the trigger on this idea if Story continues to look iffy in the coming weeks.
However, there is a twist to this entire Story-Mayer situation, and that twist goes by the name of Franklin Arias. The 20-year-old Arias is Boston's No. 2 overall prospect, and he happens to be a magical defensive player. Is it possible that the Red Sox see Arias — not Mayer — as the organization's future shortstop? If Boston believes Arias will be MLB-ready by the end of the 2027 season, that could have them envisioning an Arias-Mayer dynamic duo at shortstop and second base, respectively.
Perhaps Franklin Arias is the Red Sox's future shortstop (not Marcelo Mayer)
This Arias factor adds a whole new wrinkle to the conversation. Maybe Cora and Boston's brain trust feel that shifting Mayer over to shortstop for this season and next season wouldn't be ideal if Mayer's just going to return to second base once Arias is up. In that world, keeping Mayer at second base in 2026-27 might be a wise move.
Ultimately though, Cora's priority has to be 2026, not 2027 or 2028. In other words, Cora's job, first and foremost, is to put the best possible field on the team today to win games. This is where you have to throw all of this speculative planning about Mayer or Arias out the window and just ask yourself a simple question — who is the best defensive shortstop on Boston's MLB roster right now?
If Cora is still legitimately convinced that the answer to that question is Story, so be it. But if he's keeping Story at short for any other reason, that's a grievous offense, especially for a team that will need to win every margin possible to compete in the gauntlet that is the American League East. A 5-9 start hasn't helped in that regard.